How Much Inheritance Is Too Much?

Rich Parents Want Their Kids To Be Rich — But Not Too Rich

Good
news! It turns out that extremely wealthy people worry about the prospect of giving
their children too much money in inheritance. The bad news is that their
definition of "too much money" is $63
million.

If you’d managed to stop being angry at the Rich
Kids of Instagram, a new survey released by Merrill Lynch is here to give you
some more fodder. The bank asked 206 people with more than $5 million in assets
questions about their feelings about financial matters, and the findings reported by Bloomberg Business are truly a look at how the other half lives.

According to the survey, $63 million was thought to be too much money to leave to one child (from a family pot of $100 million), lest the nest egg discourage the heir
from working hard. But, these family scions won't necessarily be forced to join the paycheck-earning masses — an inheritance of $26 million was seen as
too little.

And, a lot of wealthy kids will be raking in those big bucks: A whopping
91% of respondents said they wanted to give most of their money to their families.

Mostly, though, the opinions of these 206 people tilted heavily toward keeping what
they had; 86% said they would do everything within the law to pay as little in
taxes as possible.

The results may not be shocking, but they do add some context to what kind of funds those #yachtlife kids are working with.